Instant (maybe with luckhit, or fight all the enemies anyway) sokoban solving for idiots like me who always make a stupid mistake even though we all know how to do it. :o

I love fighting the enemies, but sometimes I push the wrong key and end up screwing it up; maybe a "are you SURE you want to push the boulder?" query while in sokoban. :S Would be annoying but not as annoying as screwing up because you saw an a and hit the wrong key!.

This. It's been a little while now. Going on seven years since an update?

Failing that, more races, classes, and/or combinations of above. Already ascended all we have. More variety in Gehennom, the mazey parts grate on the nerves. Many, many more choices in terms of artifact weapons. Artifact armor/gear you could get/pray for.

Any suggestion I'd make for new content in 4.0 would be porting content from Slash'Em. Short of merging the two, the only other thing I'd want to see would be some new role-specific content. Perhaps an additional quest?

Okay, let me streamline my request a bit. A full merge would be a lot to swallow.

That said, I'd like to see the roles that were added to Slash'EM given a fair shake in the main game. A few of the artifacts were balanced (some for the better and some not), which I certainly think is a good idea, and I like some of the new non-weapon artifacts that were added. I'm still not a fan of firearms or lightsabers and they can get right out of my dungeon.

Most of the additional levels, in my opinion, don't adjust the game's difficulty by much; they mostly just flavor the dungeon between Sokoban and Gehennom, so I could go either way on that one. The Guild of Disgruntled Adventurers is sort of silly and challenging at the same time.

I like your suggestion of an optional quest; that actually hadn't occured to me until just now. Something unnecessary for ascension, but make the reward worth the extra time and difficulty.

Now that I'm thinking about it a bit more, I would like to see a role that suits dwarves better than the ones already available to them.

It'd be funny to see something like monster reactions. I saw a gnome step on a polymorph trap, and i could almost hear it scream in my head as it tore out of its clothes and grew to a troll. Then i saw it step onto the trap again on purpose, but ended up as a skeleton. If a monster hits a deadly trap, hearing it scream would be hilarious. Minor traps could be just quieter yelps, unless the monster knows it's there.

Also, I'd like it it pets followed the player more, if that's possible to do.

Finally, it'd be cool to have neutral and chaotic players to have a weapon(s) that's as easy to get as Excalibur is for lawful players.

I like the idea of monster reactions. I'd take it even further: if you wake up a barracks, for example, the soldiers should shout things back and forth to each other while they're searching for you. If you're close enough, you'll hear what they say, if not, "You hear some shouting but you can't make out what's being said." When a soldier finds a dead soldier, he should report to the others, "Man down", that kind of thing, a wounded soldier should say "I'm hit, I need reinforcements", if the soldiers are getting decimated, they should yell things like "Danger, fall back". Again, only if you're close enough will you hear what's being said.

I'd like to see a greater variety of monster movements. Currently all monsters move pretty much the same way with the exception of grid bugs and the smarter teleporting monsters. Giant rats should scurry along the edges of rooms instead of coming out in the open. Monsters with intelligence and missile weapons should use them and back off to try to stay out of close combat range. Soldiers should march in formation and give each other covering fire. Lots of possibilities for adding depth to the game here.

I'd like to see the issue of monsters eating (other than just pets) tackled. Obviously some care will have to be taken to not throw off game balance, but again this would add a lot more depth to the game. Giant rats would eat almost anything, other monsters maybe not so much. Rats and orcs and goblins and the like wouldn't have any issue with eating their own kind (I'm thinking of Lord of the Rings here: "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!"), but other monsters well might. A giant rat might well eat that floating eye corpse before you get a chance to! I guess that might open up a can of worms-- can monsters get intrinsics from eating corpses?

I would love to see some savepoint/resurrection checkpoints. Perhaps the Oracle offers to resurrect you for a price. Of course this would need to be penalized in terms of points. Maybe your total points are reduced by 10% every time you use resurrection (excluding the use of the amulet of life saving). And maybe these resurrection checkpoints are limited.

Perhaps:

1) The Oracle.
2) A co-aligned priest/priestess in a temple.
3) Quest leader.
4) Not sure where else, maybe as a gift for sacrificing.

I suppose that I get sick of starting over sometimes.

I do agree that some monster specific behaviors and messages would be nice. Most monsters seem to default to running straight for the '@'. This can be predictable, but it doesn't always matter. Perhaps some monsters prefer to attack your pet, like rats or 'q' or 's', so that you then have to defend them, or let them fend for themselves.

I agree that the pets should stick closer. I get really tired of trying to find my pet when i have cleared a level. And I refuse to chase it around the whole time, nothing would ever get done.

I think a few more diseases could be nice, like perhaps the flu has symptoms:

Sneezing: makes you not so stealthy.
Vomiting: makes you hungry.
Fever: makes you weak.
Runs: make you aggravate monsters and lose hit points.

Perhaps a plague! This would have to be confined to levels and rare, but it could be interesting if you could carry it with you to other levels. Hmmmm... maybe not.

I would like to see some more classes/races, an expansion set so to speak.

Especially some absurd ones like maybe:

A Postmaster. They start with a bag of holding, sensible shoes, a hat, and a registered letter addressed to the Wizard of Yendor. The wizard could still be hostile because perhaps the letter is a court summons, or divorce papers. The postmaster would be able to instantly identify scrolls, but not spellbooks and be restricted to skilled in all weapons and maybe expert in some spells. Maybe kicking would be his best attack to start. And perhaps starting with the speed intrinsic. Ideally, this would be a good general character that could be played in almost any way. Hmmm....

>I would love to see some savepoint/resurrection checkpoints. Perhaps the Oracle offers to resurrect you for a price. >Of course this would need to be penalized in terms of points. Maybe your total points are reduced by 10% every time >you use resurrection (excluding the use of the amulet of life saving). And maybe these resurrection checkpoints are >limited.
>
>Perhaps:
>
>1) The Oracle.
>2) A co-aligned priest/priestess in a temple.
>3) Quest leader.
>4) Not sure where else, maybe as a gift for sacrificing.
>
>I suppose that I get sick of starting over sometime.

I too am annoyed by stupid deaths, but Nethack wouldn't be Nethack without the permadeath. Dying for stupid reasons is part of the game, as annoying as it may be.

Although I sort of like the idea of the sacrifice gift--maybe a gift could be an amulet of life saving? Or maybe you could get intrinsic life saving from being crowned? (It would only work once.)

Yes, I agree that dying is an important part of NetHack. It is actually very cathartic. As I build a character and accumulate equipment, the game gets more and more tense. Then, it is time to start fresh because my character is dead. Almost a relief sometimes... SOMETIMES!

Seeing as how there exists the AOLS, resurrection is not entire out of line with the spirit of the game. It is possible, just hard to achieve (I have never found one). I suppose that a way to receive intrinsic life saving would be interesting and, I think, still well balanced. Just like with donating the right amount of money for your level to a priest you can get a lower AC class. Perhaps, if you donate a particular amount of gold or a particular item then you are granted intrinsic life saving that is lost after one use.

Or maybe as a result of crowning your god will resurrect you with a minion as a pet from a suitably reasonable list of useful, but not overpowered monsters. But only once. If you need it again then he is displeased and decides to look for a new champion.

That would add a lot of value to abiding by your alignment.

Some sort of intrinsic lifesaving would be nice. Especially for Monks who don't have many choices for Reflection other than the AOR or easily stolen artifacts that require wishing.

> Especially some absurd ones like maybe:
>
> A Postmaster. They start with a bag of holding,
> sensible shoes, a hat, and a registered letter
> addressed to the Wizard of Yendor. The wizard
> could still be hostile because perhaps the letter
> is a court summons, or divorce papers. The
> postmaster would be able to instantly identify
> scrolls, but not spellbooks and be restricted to
> skilled in all weapons and maybe expert in some
> spells. Maybe kicking would be his best attack to
> start. And perhaps starting with the speed
> intrinsic. Ideally, this would be a good general
> character that could be played in almost any way.
> Hmmm....
>
> So many ideas. I just hope that there is
> eventually an update

I'd like the dev team to decide wether this -> http://bilious.homelinux.org/?208 is good or not. It would also be nice to have the Gehennom mazing patch in the game, which really fits in well IMO (http://bilious.homelinux.org/?78). Of course, stuff like statuscolors, menucolors et cetera should be included in vanilla. Stuff like this
http://bilious.homelinux.org/?296 or this http://bilious.homelinux.org/?116 would also be awesome. And, also very important in my opinion, a rework of the scoring system. It's awful at the moment.

That is, an interface or preferably an object (remember stone, deity's notebook, or something) which can record text and is available in all my games. - You're given a notebook by your god at startup, which contains the contents of the same book last time you died. Can be dropped, (burnt), blanked, lost, and left in death drops.

More monsters with a deadly range attack. Most monsters are really only threats when they are at zero range. Trading daggers/arrows/darts/whatever with them will almost always result in a win for the player. The few deaths due to ranged attacks are from poison darts/arrows or from black dragon breath, both of which are often not worries by the time the player has progressed far enough to meet them. And from the gnome with a wand of death, which is very rare.

Monsters with a harassing range attack. Perhaps orcs with bows should run away from you while firing arrows at you.

Some, but not all monsters with ranged attacks should be smart enough to not shoot other monsters.

I want to see monsters use the stairs with great regularity. If I escape from some nasties that are a few squares away from the stairs then I want to see them (eventually at whatever speed it would have taken them to normally arrive) come up the stairs after me.

There's no reason to expect things that want to kill you to stay on a different level when they watch you flee.

Honestly, I'd even actually prefer if the vast majority of monsters that "randomly" appear in a level to come from the rooms with the stairs. That seems more realistic and makes the stairs a bit more of a challenge.

A very rare absorption-type monster generated in shops that eats anything and everything it walks over, permanently gaining intrinsics, wielding weapons and wearing armor, etc. Would have to be non-tamable to keep game balance.